Category Archives: Project Horus

High Altitude Balloon Launch – 26th Jan 2016

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(c) 2016 International Space UniversityThe Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program (SHSSP) is jointly organised by the International Space University (ISU) and the University of South Australia. It is a unique, five week live-in experience focusing on an international, intercultural and interdisciplinary (3 “I”s) educational philosophy for which the ISU is renowned.

The SHSSP have asked the AREG who have considerable experience with high altitude ballooning in Australia to assist with their participant Stratospheric Balloon Project, culminating in a high altitude balloon launch on Australia Day, the 26th of January 2016.

The balloon launch will take place, weather conditions favourable, from the Mt. Barker High School in the Adelaide Hills, just east of Adelaide.

The launch is expected to be released between 09:30 to 09:45 am local CDST January 26th, or 23:00 to 23:15 UTC January 25th .

The balloon is expected to carry two payloads, one supplied by the SHSSP participants as part of their course project and the usual AREG/Horus telemetry payloads. Telemetry will the normal RTTY mode on 434.450 MHz USB.

Please keep your eyes on the AREG website for more details closer to the date.

Matthew, VK5ZM

UPDATE: 23rd January – Balloon will ID as AX5ARG-1!

As the launch is occurring on Australia day, and Radio Amateurs across Australia can also use the AX prefix on that day in their callsigns, AREG has determined that the callsign that the balloon RTTY telemetry beacon will use for this flight is AX5ARG-1.

To commemorate the special callsign, stations who provide evidence of receiving the telemetry beacon via the habhub tracking database (through the use of dl-fldigi) will be eligible for the special QSL card. We hope this will encourage more people to attempt to receive the balloon and relay the telemetry to the Internet during this flight!

 

PicoHorus Launch and Recovery!

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PicoHorus “N+2” was launched at 11AM CDT on Saturday the 2nd of Jan 2016. The payload consisted of a light telemetry beacon, weighing in at 45 grams including batteries. A small latex balloon was used, deliberately under-filled in an attempt to achieve a ‘float’ condition at approximately 30km altitude.

The payload was launched near Mt Barker in the Adelaide Hills, from a fairly windy hill:

The wind, combined with the very small amount of balloon neck lift resulted in the balloon not rising at all for a few minutes! Eventually the balloon rose above the higher ground winds, and continued on upwards at the desired ascent rate of 1m/s.

The telemetry beacon transmitted the ‘standard’ RTTY telemetry as well as an experimental binary FSK mode developed by David Rowe. The binary telemetry was transmitted between the RTTY telemetry frames, and proved to be far more reliable than the RTTY telemetry, especially in low SNR conditions(more to come on this!). Unfortunately the demodulator for the binary telemetry is not quite in a ‘user friendly’ state yet, and so it was only used by a small number of listeners, with the rest using the dl-fldigi software. Special thanks to Joe VK5EI and Ivan VK5HS for tracking the RTTY payload through the majority of the flight!

PicoHorus N+2 Flight Profile

PicoHorus N+2 Flight Profile

The balloon proceeded to head east to the Victorian border while slowly ascending to a maximum altitude of 28376m. After floating for approximately 20 minutes, the balloon burst, sending the payload plummeting to the ground at 15m/s. The balloon was tracked down to 3.3km altitude by Ivan, from his home QTH near Renmark. The final position placed the balloon about 25km north-west of Pinaroo, SA, approximately 200km east of the launch site.

PicoHorus N+2 Landing Area

PicoHorus N+2 Landing Area

Recovery

This payload wasn’t originally intended to be recovered, but given the landing location looked reasonable for a recovery, Andy VK5AKH and Mark VK5QI decided a Sunday drive was in order to see if the payload was still operational.

Leaving Adelaide at around 8:30am, they arrived at the expected landing site around 11:30am to find the payload still transmitting strongly, and reporting a position just 50m away from a road. A short walk into a field had the payload in hand!

Thanks again to everyone that helped out decoding telemetry, without your input we would have not been able to recover the payload.

Our next balloon launch is scheduled for late January – stay tuned!

73s, Mark VK5QI

Project Horus Pico Launch – 2nd January

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PicoHorus PayloadsThis Saturday (2nd Jan 2016) at around 11AM, Mark VK5QI and David Rowe VK5DGR will be launching a “Pico” (sub-50g) balloon payload, with the aim of testing a new Binary FSK telemetry mode. This is intended to be the next evolution of the Project Horus 70cm RTTY down-link and should result in more reliable telemetry, but without the slow update-rate penalty of data modes like Olivia or JT65. 

The binary telemetry modem is still under development, and the de-modulator currently only exists as a collection of Octave and Python scripts. However, the payload will still be transmitting the ‘classic’ RTTY telemetry on 434.650MHz, along with binary telemetry on the same frequency. A guide to tracking using dl-fldigi is available here.

The launch is intended to have a very slow ascent rate (~1m/s), with the intent of causing the balloon to float at around 15-20km altitude. However, the balloon is of fairly old stock and may burst early. If a float does occur, the flight path should track towards Victoria.

As always, listeners are much appreciated, especially as we won’t be chasing this flight. The flight will be trackable on the day at: http://tracker.habhub.org/

73s, Mark VK5QI

Project Horus News: HorusLoRA test flight success

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Mark VK5QI in conjunction with David VK5DGR undertook the Horus telemetry test flight today and were met with roaring success. Here is a short photo blog of the day’s events.

100g Totex Ceiling balloon, approx 500g of neck lift.

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Launch!

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Cutdown payload just below the balloon (cutdown capsule just above the cutdown payload, though it’s not really visible in this picture). Below that is the parachute, and far below that is the RTTY payload.

Tracking from Pt Lincoln!

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Joel Stanley (VK5FJMS) was tracking from Winters Hill in Pt Lincoln, and was able to ‘ping’ the payload using a fairly modest antenna setup.

Horus Messenger!

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Screenshot of the ‘Horus Messenger’ software in operation. This allows us to transmit text messages from the LoRa ‘ground stations’, which are then digi-peated by the balloon payload. You can see a brief chat between myself and Joel.

Cutdown time!

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Do I really really want to cutdown? Yes, yes I do!

Landing Site Map

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(With us heading back to a road that gets us closer to the landing site)

Landing Site

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Lots of gum trees. The landowners (Alex and a nice lady who’s name I can’t remember) were very nice retired couple, who assisted us in getting to the landing site through a number of sheep-filled paddocks.

Quad-Bike Assist

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One of the landowners driving down to open some gates and disable some electric fences for us.

David (VK5DGR) DFing

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David Rowe doing some direction finding on the RTTY payload. Also sheep.

Recovered!

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The payloads were found hanging from a gum-tree, about 2m above ground level.

Project Horus Launches Planned: 29th Dec & 2nd Jan

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IMG_1204Mark VK5QI is planning to launch a couple of ‘medium’ altitude balloons this week as test flights of a new LoRa based flight termination controller. The first is tomorrow Tuesday (29th), and one possibly on Saturday (2nd Jan). Both will be launched from the Mt Barker High School Oval, and will only have a maximum altitude of 15km or so.

Testing new Command Systems

The primary aims for these launches are:

  • Test the LoRa RF link.
  • Test some new uplink & message-digi-peating features of the payload.
  • Test a new cut-down mechanism (something with a little more ‘bang’ than before.

LoRa payloads have flown on the last few Horus launches, as a lead up to the retirement of the current ‘Osiris’ cutdown payload, which uses a now-obsolete FSK modem-on-a-chip. The new LoRa payloads have the potential to provide a more reliable uplink using far less power. The downside is that specialised receiver hardware is required (well, as specialised as a module you can buy on eBay for $10 is) . As such, it’ll only be used on the cutdown payload, where the only people really interested in it are those of us in the chase cars who are trying to recover all the shiny cameras hanging beneath the balloon!

Where to Listen?

Both launches will be at 10:30AM CDT, and will have the following payloads attached:

  • RTTY Telemetry: 434.450MHz, 100 baud 7N2 (Use dl-fldigi to decode this as usual)
  • LoRa Payload: 431.650MHz, 125KHz bandwidth, 4/8 Coding Rate, SF10

As always, trackers are appreciated. The flights will be able to monitored via www.habhub.org

HorusLora Track Prediction

LaunchBox Horus Balloon Flight 18th October 2015

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Grant VK5GR holding the balloon just before launch

This weekend was the first Project Horus activity for this year, when we teamed up again with LaunchBox to put a School payload aloft. The students designed a number of experiments and flew them in a payload chassis supplied/organised by LaunchBox. Project Horus then provided tracking telemetry payloads and recovery teams and vehicles plus flight engineering services to the LaunchBox team to enable them to get the student payloads aloft.

The large turnout of students on a Sunday morning showed that there is still plenty of curiosity and interest in science in schools which is great to see! This was especially so considering the types of questions the AREG team was fielding, which bodes well for science education.

Launch Operations

Filling and launching went without a hitch, and the changes to the regulator and filling system that allowed the balloon to be filled in under 5 minutes was a welcome improvement! Thanks Dennis VK5FDEN for helping out with this.

The flight was planned so that recovery would be relatively painless, with the target area being somewhere in the vicinity of Palmer in the Adelaide Hills. This level of control is only possible because of the flight tele-command capability that the team has devised, and plays a big part in the success of these flights for groups like LaunchBox.

Tracking Network

Another major piece of the puzzle was the tracking network. The primary telemetry this flight was based on a 100 Baud 7N2 RTTY signal on 434.450, with a backup trial system using LoRa modulation as an experiment. This telemetry, apart from being received in the tracking chase cars, is also collected by a large number of Amateur Radio ground stations across South Australia. These stations make a major contribution to the project through collecting and feeding the balloon telemetry into the Internet. This is then accessed from our chase vehicles over 3G/4G cellular links and adds to our own data. It is a great way of getting involved, even if you are not out in the field.

Michael VK5ZEA and Peter VK5KX posted the following pictures of their setups and what they saw at various stages throughout the flight.

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Others contributing to the tracking included numerous stations in Adelaide; VK5ALX and VK5NEX in Whyalla, and VK3BQ, VK3SMC and VK3KCX in Melbourne.

Flight Statistics

To control the landing zone, the flight itself was terminated early using the Horus tele-command system. (Had we waited in this case for the balloon to burst, it is quite possible it may have landed much closer to heavily populated areas, something we do our utmost to avoid). The final flight statistics are therefore as follows:

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Recovery

Recovery went smoothly with both chase teams waiting patiently for landing approximately 1km from touch down. After locating the land-owners and obtaining permission to enter their farm, we were able to walk in about 600m and collect the payloads.

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The main payload has several experiments including cameras, a weather station, and other interesting ideas contributed from students to answer questions like “what does happen to a marshmallow and popcorn when you place it in a freezing near vacuum?”

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LaunchBox Schools Payload

Conclusion

The day ended with the LaunchBox and AREG Project Horus chase teams meeting at the Palmer Hotel to hand over the payloads. A job well done everyone, and a great example of using Amateur Radio to further science education in this country!

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AREG/Project Horus and LaunchBox Crew at the end of the day’s Chase

Again we must say a big thank you also to the HabHub.org community and the UK High Altitude Society who provide balloon tracking and telemetry collection services for projects such as ours across the world.

Stay tuned in the new year as well as there are many more exciting things potentially happening with Project Horus being considered for 2016!

NEWSFLASH: Project Horus Balloon Flight Sun 18th October

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On Sunday the 18th of October, at 10am Adelaide time, Project Horus will be conducting a high altitude balloon launch from the Mount Barker area. This launch will be flying payloads designed by Adelaide area high schools, along with the standard Project Horus telemetry payloads. The launch is expected to reach approximately 30km altitude, with telemetry receivable from most of VK3 and VK5. The launch site for this balloon will be closed to the general public due as school children are present, we thank you for your understanding.

Anyone wishing to help track the balloon is invited to listen out on 434.450MHz USB for the RTTY telemetry. This can be decoded with the standard dl-fldigi software.

  •  Main Telemetry: 100 baud 7N2 Telemetry on 434.450MHz USB +/- drift. Callsign will be VK5ARG-1.
  • We will also be flying a cut-down payload and an experimental ‘LoRa’ telemetry payload (431.650MHz).
  • An excellent dl-fldigi setup and tracking guide is available here: https://ukhas.org.uk/guides:tracking_guide

The Flight and Payload information for this launch will appear in dl-fldigi on Saturday the 17th. Tracking of the flight will be available on the HabHub Tracker page.

Current predictions, (as of Thursday the 15th), place the landing area somewhere between Pompoota and Bowhill:

Predicted landing area, as of the 15th of October.

Predicted landing area, as of the 15th of October.

Project Horus Launch 9th November 2014

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On Sunday the 9th of November the AREG members assisted Project Horus and Launchbox with a double balloon launch from Mt Barker.

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Filling 2kg Balloon with 5.5m^3 of Helium

These two Balloon launches contained nine High School science experiments along with an experimental satellite payload from the University of South Australia.  They also carried the usual Project Horus cutdown and telemetry payloads to ensure recovery.

Thankfully the first payload was recovered from near Harogate and was relatively intact, after a freefall from 33kms sans chute.

The second payload made a miraculous landing into a farmers field just outside of Palmer, thanks to Andy VK5AKH for sharing the footage.

More specific details about the flights, altitudes and flight paths can be found on the Project Horus website.

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Telemetry & Cutdown ready to go

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First Balloon Train ready for Launch !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A big thanks has to go to our volunteer ground crew Gary VK5FGRY, Dennis VK5FDEN and his wife Irene, for cooking us a brilliant breakfast.  They also put up and took down the Marquee and made sure the oval was nice and clean while we’d all taken off to go and chase the Balloons…  Gary also made sure we had plenty of photos of the event, so it stands to reason why we’ve no photo of him to put on the blog (*grin*).

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Breakfast of Legends !

I’m confident that everyone enjoyed the day and can’t wait for the next adventure in the coming months !

73 Matt, VK5ZM